Where did Jihad Jane plot suspects marry?

You might remember Jamie Paulin-Ramirez. On April 2 Paulin-Ramirez was arrested in Philadelphia after she arrived on a flight from Ireland. Paulin-Ramirez had been arrested and released in Ireland in March in conjunction with the so-called Jihad Jane plot. Paulin-Ramirez is a Muslim convert, but not Jihad Jane, which is a pseudonym allegedly used by fellow American, Colleen LaRose.

Paulin-Ramirez {photo} is from Colorado and according to the federal indictment against her Paulin-Ramirez left America last September, around the 12th. She arrived in "Europe" the following day and Paulin-Ramirez "married CC#2, whom she had never before met in person." (CC#2 is unidentified in the indictment, but it seems pretty clear CC#2 is Abu Nabil Charaf Damache or, sometimes, Ali Charaf Damache.)

Nowhere in the indictment does it say that Paulin-Ramirez traveled to Ireland on September 12. Only Europe is mentioned. However, Paulin-Ramirez's mother Christine Holcomb-Mott says her daughter "went to Ireland" with her young son.

Given that Damache was living in Waterford at the time and that Paulin-Ramirez was living in Waterford when she was arrested in March it seems likely that she did, in fact, come directly to Ireland from Colorado last September. That would also mean, if the indictment is accurate, that Paulin-Ramirez married Damache in Ireland that same day.

Yet, under Irish law that should not have been possible. Irish law mandates that couples intending to marry must present themselves to the Registrar three months before the wedding date. This applies to any marriage, whether it's a civil ceremony or religious rite.

For a while I figured that the indictment had to be wrong. Some of the Irish media referred to Paulin-Ramirez as Damache's "partner", which could have meant that the two were not legally married. However, this week's Waterford News & Star carries a letter from Damache written in a "detention center" in which he refers to Paulin-Ramirez as his wife.

So, I ask, did the two get married on the day Paulin-Ramirez arrived in Ireland? If yes, how could that be?

I don't think it can be a case of the two marrying in Islamic law, but not legally in Irish law. "There is at present no provision for the civil registration of Muslim marriage ceremonies solemnised in the State," according to this web page from an Irish government body. And if the marriage was not legally recognized in Ireland I doubt the federal authorities would have used the word "married" in the indictment.

I can only speculate, but I would guess that they found a sympathetic civil Registrar, one who was willing to overlook the law on the three months notice. Maybe he (or she) was duped, lied to or bribed. I don't know.

Or maybe he (or she) was uneasy at the thought of saying 'No' to these people from a religious minority. Even though that might sound far-fetched, offending minorities in today's Ireland is what spitting on a Catholic priest would have been in the 1950s - not so much a legal offense as a social crime of the highest order.

All of this might seem a very minor point, but I think it hints at a bigger issue. Why Ireland? Why did Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a woman who the federal government claims wanted to move to Europe to "to live and train with jihadists," come here to live?